MJC

From the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/h...l/overview.stm

JAJ

Someone has forgotten that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom



Jeremy

Tangram

You will notice the footnote further down the page ( the BBC website doesn't mention the UK, the OP does )

" *British Isles means England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Britain means England, Scotland and Wales. For more on what the figures show and how they were compiled, read Your questions answered. "

Paul.

dugongs

based on census data for 1991 to 2001

to be honest uk immigration is a very current issue and you have to question the motivation of the BBC when it uses such historic data. dare i suggest it is trying to mislead.

i also object to net data being used as this masks the social changes in the uk which need to be understood.

CPW

That is irritating. Of course, had they called it 'An immigration map of Great Britain' that would have solved the problem pretty much, since Northern Ireland is certainly not part of Great Britain (which is a geographical entity - the island on which England, Scotland and Wales are located). 'Britain' is not quite the same thing.

The idea that foreign-born residents are synonymous with immigrants is a little bit disingenuous - of course, all foreign-born residents must have 'immigrated' to the country in the sense that they entered it to take up residence, but the issue that the report alludes to with the German-born children of British servicemen is a good example of what I mean: such children are not 'immigrants' in any normally accepted sense of the word (either legally or sociologically). It's clear why the compilers would have used this criterion, of course - the data are readily available from the census figures.

Indeed, it would be interesting to know what proportion of foreign-born residents of Great Britain (and Northern Ireland) were in fact British citizens on the date of their first arrival in the United Kingdom.

JAJ

In their figures on take-up rates of British citizenship based on country of birth, this is one of the issues that the Home Office mentions as a potential distortion:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb0805.pdf


Jeremy

Tangram

[QUOTE=CPW]That is irritating. Of course, had they called it 'An immigration map of Great Britain' that would have solved the problem pretty much, since Northern Ireland is certainly not part of Great Britain (which is a geographical entity - the island on which England, Scotland and Wales are located). 'Britain' is not quite the same thing.


They did.... if you go read it.